On the name "Jennifer"

[alice]

Is the initial /ʤ/ a one-off, or the result of a more general Cornish palatalisation of /gw/?

[dewrad]

To be honest, I'm dubious about the derivation of "Jennifer" from PC *windoseibarā. There are literally no other examples of *w >/dʒ/ in the Cornish corpus, and as far as I'm aware there aren't any attestations of the name before the 18th century. The expected Cornish reflex of a Proto-Celtic *windoseibarā would be something like **Gwenoover, which is difficult to relate to the form "Jennifer". I'll be honest, in my opinion it's more likely to be a borrowing of Genevieve or maybe Juniper rather than a cognate of Welsh Gwenhwyfar.

[Zaarin]

Huh. I always assumed Jennifer got to English via a Latin rendering of Gwenhwyfar like Geniver or some such. That's very weird, and I suspect Dewrad is correct.

[dewrad]

Actually, it occurs to me that in the Cornish drama Bewnans Ke, we have the form Gwynnever, but I don't know if that's a native reflex or a borrowing from French Guinevere.

[Pabappa]

The name was mostly used in Cornwall before the 20th century. It became popular in all English-speaking countries, first in UK in the 1950s, and then in US as the top name for women born in 1970-1984.

I dunno .... if it's known to have a Cornish origin then I would lean towards it being from Guinevere, however irregular the derivation must be. Names can be highly irregular .... John, James, etc.... And some female names are blends or have no known origin, like Samantha. It would never have occurred to me that Jennifer and Guinevere could be related but that is my theory right now. It's perhaps worth noting that J names have been popular for a long time in English... sometimes half of a classroom has both boys and girls with J names.

[Linguoboy]

Names can be highly irregular .... John, James, etc...

What's so irregular about "John" and "James"?

[dewrad]

The name was mostly used in Cornwall before the 20th century. It became popular in all English-speaking countries, first in UK in the 1950s, and then in US as the top name for women born in 1970-1984.

I dunno .... if it's known to have a Cornish origin then I would lean towards it being from Guinevere, however irregular the derivation must be. Names can be highly irregular .... John, James, etc.... And some female names are blends or have no known origin, like Samantha. It would never have occurred to me that Jennifer and Guinevere could be related but that is my theory right now. It's perhaps worth noting that J names have been popular for a long time in English... sometimes half of a classroom has both boys and girls with J names.

Er, it's only known to have a Cornish origin in the same way that "fuck" is known to be an acronym for "for unlawful carnal knowledge". Just because a lot of people say it doesn't mean it's actually true. If we're going by "well, it's a name and names are weird", then I have conclusive evidence for you that "Michael" is actually derived from the Welsh name "Maelgwn".

[Pabappa]

All in saying is that if we can turn Jacob into James (and Jim, etc) we can certainly turn Guinevere into Jennifer. I'm not saying it's proven, but my intuition is to stick with that theory.

Birth registries could confirm if the name really did radiate from Cornwall as claimed.

[Linguoboy]

All in saying is that if we can turn Jacob into James (and Jim, etc) we can certainly turn Guinevere into Jennifer.

What happened to "John"?

The only "irregular" change in the development of Jacobus to James is the Vulgar Latin shift of b to m. From that point on, the changes are pretty straightforward both in French and in other Western Romance languages.

[jal]

As for the origin of the initial J, assuming that "Jennifer" indeed came from "Gwenhwyvar", could it be a contamination of similar sounding names like "Jane", "Janet", "Jenny" etc.?


JAL

[mèþru]

I think that's wht happened personally.

[Salmoneus]

Perhaps worth pointing out that the same change has happened in the Italian form: Gwenhwyfar > Guinevere > Ginevra.